A THOUSAND WORDS - Alex Waterhouse-Hayward's blog on pictures, plants, politics and whatever else is on his mind.

A Double (bass) Date

Saturday, November 29, 2014

Amelia, Curtis, Patricia & Nicolo

It was a hot date
involving two Americans and two Italians. In our version the Italians kept to
themselves while the Americans raised a storm of a conversation about the
origin of the Italians.

The two Americans
Nuyorican Patricia Hutter (formerly a bassist for the Vancouver Symphony
Orchestra and now a full-time painter) and Curtis Daily, Portland-based baroque
bassist (Portland Baroque Orchestra, Seattle Baroque Orchestra and frequent
player with our very own Pacific Baroque Orchestra and with Early Music Vancouver
programs) met half a block from my house in Patricia’s house on Athlone Street.
They met so that their respective Italian basses (both made in the 18th century
could have a visit.

There was one problem.
Hutter’s bass, Nicolo insisted in knowing the name of Daily’s bass. But Daily
explained that if he were to ever have children they would be unnamed. He
simply did not like to name people or things. I interjected that perhaps Hutter
could name the bass but that since Nicolo was a male, Daily’s should be a
female. It would not be decent (at the very least in the 18th century)
for two basses of the same sex to have a date.

Hutter gave Daily’s
bass the lovely name of Amelia. All four of them sat together and I snapped the
picture.

For most of the time
there I was the odd man of the fifth column. There was rapid conversation which
included the weights of Amelia and Nicolo, who had manufactured them and how
they had been adapted to modern playing (in the case of Nicolo) and how and where
Amelia might have been brought back to her original shape as a bass that would
have been used as it was in the 18th century.

I have no record of
any of the words that might have been exchanged by Nicolo and Amelia. I don’t
think that I could have possibly heard anything as I am sure that if they did
communicate it was well below my audible frequency.

It has not quite
dawned to the inhabitants of Portland
that a fantastic baroque violinist, Monica Huggett is head of their Portland
Baroque Orchestra. Those who know can only be jealous that Portland lured her.

In Vancouver we are as lucky if you consider
that the Artistic Director of the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, Alexander Weimann
(while not being a virtuoso violinist) is a virtuoso harpsichordist (pretty
good with the other keyboard instruments) and is one of the best multi-taskers
in the business. He can play and direct simultaneously.

Alexander Weimann relishing the tuning of his harpsichord

But there is another
double quality that Weimann has that I was able to confirm in tonight’s Nachtmusik
concert at the sublimely acoustic Christ Church Cathedral (but repeating this
Sunday at 2:30 at the Rose Gellert Hall in Langley).

I found out from
baroque bassist Curtis Daily (naturally on a weekend loan from the Portland
Baroque Orchestra) that the orchestra even practiced today from 3pm.

Ed Reifel tunes Early Music Vancouver's timpani

Alex Weimann is a
perfectionist. That is one quality that may simply be part of the fact that he
is German and simply confirms what we non-Germans think about them.

But there is that
other quality (do Germans as a whole have this?) of humour. Weimann has a subtle
and elegant sense of humour. It shone in tonight’s concert of which I thought
had as a theme, music about night time. That was purely coincidental as the
program was an exploration of the serenata or serenade as it unfolded from the
17th century into the 18th. Trust Weimann to find a
catchy theme (but not one) night to teach us (and Weimann is a fine teacher)
about music and where it came from.

Jazz has been one of my great loves but I have mostly avoided going to
live jazz concerts because I despise drum solos. Ditto for bass. While
my friend Curtis Daily, the consummate baroque bassist did not try my
patience by playing one, percussionist Ed Reifel proved to me that a
percussion solo can be exciting and enlightening.

As a bonus that
combined the talents of former head of Early Music Vancouver, José Verstappenn to find stuff (in
this case a pair of very rare and handsome baroque timpani) and the percussive
virtuosity of Toronto musician Ed Reifel, the program included many loud (and
beautiful) bangs on the timpani (two solos, how’s that?) snare drums, castanets,
etc.

The concert ended with
a lively and nicely loud Serenata Notturna in D major KV 239 by Mozart.

But it began with that
timpani solo and then Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusic. What was special about
this chestnut is that it was played by only 13 musicians, 7 violins, 2 violas, two
cellos, a harpsichord and a bass. Inside the beautiful Christ Church Cathedral,
up front it was intimate with quiet moments. I asked bassist Curtis Daily why
the third (four in all) movement Menuetto sounded so much like a waltz and I
could imagine Grace Kelly dancing it with Alec Guinness in The Swan. It seems
(and I must always admit that I am indeed an amateur) that the menuetto and the
waltz are both in ¾ time that would explain, perhaps the influence of Mozart in
the Viennese Waltz.

The second piece was
by a slightly obscure but famous violinist Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (look him
up in Google and you will that the search engine wants to take you away from
Bohemia and Salzburg to our very own Canada for that other…) whose Serenade in
C major (Nachtwächter Bass) sounded to me wonderfully like a nicely tuned (for
once!) circus band.

Behold one of the
movements was a Ciacona (every time I see this in a program it has a different
spelling) of which I have already written about here. I love them but this one,
all in pitzicatto strings was off because it had no melody line to play over
the extended bass line. But I was absolutely wrong! Weimann emerged in night
clothes (a sort of pajama) and holding a lamp while singing in his fine
baritone (in German), “Listen you people, and let it call to you, the clapper
has struck nine.” At the almost end he appeared again and nine became ten. This
was entirely funny, busy and fun. Weimann knows his musical history and more. I am almost sure that his funny impersonation of the night watchman was probably based on a factual event.

The next piece was no
better (thank God!). It was Luigi Boccherini’s (1743-1805) La Musica Notturna delle Strade di Madrid. This
stuff, wonderful stuff, with lots of action from Ed Reifel, also sounded like a
circus band, but this time one that marched in the late night streets of Madrid. And the fourth
movement (of five) Los Manolos (Passacaille) sounded a lot like a Chaconne as
indeed both the Passacaille and the Chaconne are related.

But most important to me since I am am a Patrick O’Brian fan and of his Aubrey – Maturin nautical novels set in the
times of the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars is that Captain Aubrey
(not too bad a fiddler) and Doctor Stephen Maturin (who played a wicked cello)
loved Boccherini and in fact the actors play La Musica Notturna on board in the
film Master and Commander.

The second half began
with a much longer and louder timpani solo. I asked Reifel how he could do this
with only two notes. His answer left me perplexed (remember I am an amateur), “Two
notes but with many pitches.” The next work was a String Quartet in F major by
Roman Hofstetter (1742-1815). Of Hofstetter, Luigi Boccherini might have said
of the man in his accented Spanish (he worked in the Spanish Court), “En su casa lo conocen.” (they
know who he is at home). It seems that this lovely quartet with an immensely popular
second movement (of four) Serenata (andante cantabile) was all until recently attributed
to Joseph Haydn and known as his Op3. no 5.

After the concert many
of us went up to the stage to chat with the musicians and enquire about the
different instruments. I inquired as to why the lovely harpsichord, made by West Vancouver’s Craig
Tomlinson had had its cover unhinged and removed. In order for Weimann to play
the instrument and see all the musicians he directed the cover had to go.

I left to find myself
in a lovely snowy Vancouver
night wondering why more people don’t know how lucky we are to have Alexander
Weimann and the Pacific Baroque Orchestra in our city.

Okay, why is it scandalous to see a penis,
when there are endless photos online of women's sexual parts? Is it not true
that most women love a man's penis when it is erect? Why is it the last taboo?
Does it really represent rape to women? I prefer to think that it represents
man at his finest, the way we love him. How did we get so weird about nudity?
Why is an erect penis, which every woman who has loved a man adores, a shocking
taboo? Time for real equality ladies. I am sure Justin has a nice penis, and I
am happy for him. Obviously if he doesn't want anyone to see it, he wouldn't be
taking pictures of it. I am sick of looking at Kim Kardashian's ass, which
doesn't do a thing for me. I would prefer to view the delightful penises of my
favourite male stars, wouldn't you, ladies?

And this one:

Along with fisting and caning and
urolagnia, the British Board of Film Classification has banned depictions of
female orgasm that involve female ejaculation. Excuse me? Theory: men are
terrified by undeniable evidence that women experience sex, or at least the
orgasmic part, much as men do. Whoa! Clearly the porn industry and its
regulators, find women achieving real sexual satisfaction to be a threat to
their universe. Women are meat bodies to be used in the creation of the
homoerotic 'cum shot' that apparently thrills the boys to no end in their silly
world of porn.

I think it takes some guts to write this
stuff on facebook. But most of us don’t read anything on facebook we just look
at the pictures and if they remotely interest us and we have enough energy left in
our fingertips we just might click a like.

My Rosemary and I have been reading a daily
delivered NY Times for at least 18 years. I can state that thanks to the weekly
Friday Weekend Arts which is about art (excluding theatre, film and dance which
appear in other sections) plus the countless articles in the NY Times daily
paper, Sunday paper and the many magazines and the weekly Book Review, I have
gained a sort of arts education. Of late the NY Times Friday Weekend Arts has
been introducing me to artists I have never hears of. Consider the American George
Bellows, 1882-1925 whom I discovered in one of the clips here involving a
painting of his in an auction.

The Friday Weekend Arts transports me from
this beautiful backwater that is Vancouver
to a world that is out there to be seen, savoured, enjoyed, appreciated and
wowed. It is a world where newspapers routinely publish paintings and
photographs of nude human beings and they are not considered pornography or in
bad taste.

In Vancouver
the closest might be an ad for the lingerie store on South
Granville. It’s that or Group of Seven or Emily Carr’s monkey.

I remember about 18 years ago when I used
to exhibit in as many group erotic or nude shows that the long gone Exposure
Gallery (on Beatty Street) used to present at least every two months. My wife
warned me that I was placing myself in a corner and that people would not hire
me for magazines or corporate work as they would be reluctant to offend the
politically correct within their organizations. I would think that my wife was
partially right and I must have lost business.

There was one local photographer, Daniel
Collins who was a very good photographer. The last time I communicated with him
he was in a spiritual retreat in a Tibetan monastery. He was telling me his
last price for a photographic soft box that he was selling through Beau Photo.
I bought it.

In this Exposure Gallery show Collins
exhibited bit, erect and shiny penises. I was shocked! I wonder if Pia Shandel
would have been, too.

In the year 2000 I had a show in which I
collaborated with Argentine painter Juan Manuel Sánchez. One of his pieces
which we submitted (by request of the Vancouver
Sun which was featuring a preview article) had a line drawing in which a little
straight line marked that area of that which a woman has that we men don’t
have. The editor at the Sun told us he could not run the picture and asked for another
one.

Some years before I had previewed a show of
the photographs of Manuel Álvarez Bravo at the Presentation House for the
Georgia Straight by request of the then editor Charles Campbell. In my essay
(which did run) I wrote about my favourite Bravo picture La Buena fama durmiendo (The Good Reputation Sleeping). The Georgia Straight refused to run
the picture.

People tell me that things will change. The
problem is that people have been telling me that since I arrived here in 1975. They
used to cite our Scottish (puritanical) heritage. The Scots are now an evident
minority but…

Last Thursday I went
to the opening of a show, of digital imagery at the Federation of Canadian
Artists on the corner of Cartwright
Street (where it points to the Granville Island
Hotel) on Granville
Island.

This gallery in the
past has been a showcase of the more conventional medium of oil so its
one-year-at- the job Executive Director, Dutch-born Patrick Meyer is taking a
chance on a show that is all digital work.

Digital art in Vancouver seems to be
less considered than in other places of the world. Perhaps we are simply a
tradition-bound city of conservatives.

Skull # 20 - Ian Bateson

I was at the opening
because this group show included three works by my friend (since 1977) Ian
Bateson. Like many of us who started with magazines (he as an illustrator and
yours truly as a photographer) Bateson has had to pivot quickly on one foot to
change courses as the industry changed. From being a stupendous editorial
illustrator he did comic book work, books for Douglas & McIntyre that were
beautiful textbooks on different cultures around the world and within Canada as his book on the Athabasca.
From designing books Bateson launched himself into a design cooperative called
Baseline and only recently was it dissolved. Now Bateson has his own design
firm, some of which specialized on things NDP, school boards and unions.

Skull # 1 - Ian Bateson

The work that Bateson
has at the Federation of Canadian Artists is a real eye-opener as the only
information given (as it is with most of the works on display) is digital
print. I do know that Bateson’s pieces begin as photographs taken with his
iPad. He has taken pictures of skulls in various museums around the world, Venice, NY City, Alaska. Then using a
technique pioneered by British artist David Hockney (the app that Bateson uses
is called Procreate) he devolves and adapts to his own purposes.

What is particularly
interesting about Bateson’s adoption of the digital image is that from the first
time that I met him back in 1978 he was a brilliant illustrator particularly
one using minuscule and plentiful black dots. He was also adept with the air
brush. But I do remember that both he and Chris Dahl were early adopters of the
Mac when it first came out. Both mastered the first version of Photoshop when
it was introduced.

Bateson has told me
that he paints and draws still (and now) but at the moment he is taking this
digital technique forward and perhaps with the Federation Artists there will be
a new two-way avenue of art that is still misunderstood in our city.

In the 80s when
business magazines were at their apogee the word executive was a most positive
description of a man (few women in this in Vancouver at the time). We wanted powerful
businessmen who were incisive. In some way we also transferred this idea to
politicians.

We photographers then
used techniques to make these hallowed men look more powerful. One technique
was to use dramatic lighting and the other was to shoot up and have our subject
looking down at the camera from “up there”.

By the nineties
business magazines were hurting and politicians seemed to be involved in more
scandals. At that point we photographers tried to make our subjects less
powerful and more honest. My mantra when taking portraits of businessmen and
politicians became one of taking a picture, looking at it and asking myself, “Would
I buy a used car from him?”

In 1992 I photographed
Pat Quinn for the Georgia Straight. The man that faced my camera was large,
intimidating, serious and not in the least self-conscious about looking straight at
me and probably thinking, “Let’s get this over with, I have better things to do
with my time.”

But I pressed on and
actually took 24 exposures with two different kinds of b+w film. My usual for
such a session would have been 10 exposures.

I took one roll of
Quinn smoking his cigar in which the necessary technique to show smoke is to
have an additional light (a back light). Then I took shots without the cigar.

The man faced my
camera and I was using a 140mm lens on my Mamiya RB-67. This lens had me about
three feet away. I raised the camera on its tripod and pointed it down at Quinn
forcing him to look at me. This by the 90s made business men and politicians
look less powerful in a down to size sort of way.

This was my dialogue
with Quinn as I remember:

Me: Mr. Quinn you don’t
smile.

Quinn: I don’t.

Me: I used to smoke
until recently Montecristo Claros and I notice you like Romeo y Julietas.

Last Thursday I went
to the opening of Chris Dahl’s show, The Golden Age at the Harrison Galleries
on the corner of Homer and Smithe. You can read up on the show here.

But I think I am in
the position to tell you more than any bio you might read about Dahl.

I first met him in the
early 80s when I was popular free lance photographer with Malcolm Parry’s exuberantly
interesting Vancouver Magazine. The art director Rick Staehling had been lured away
to another magazine and Dahl came in directly from having been a designer at
Maclean’s in Toronto.
It was his expertise in working for a weekly that brought a sense of order to
Parry’s monthly. It was during Dahl's watch that Vancouver Magazine was voted the best magazine in all of Canada in the National Magazine Awards.

Dahl was an early convert to digital technology. A few weeks after Expo 86 closed in Vancouver Derik Murray (Murray/Love Productions) and Dahl published a book (one in French and one in English) The Expo Celebration - The Official Retrospective Book in record time using first generation scanners and computers. While art director of Equity Magazine he digitally manipulated a few covers that brought the magazine much fame (and a touch of infamy!).

Chris Dahl & Jane Edwards-Griffin

It was for Chris Dahl
that I performed the best photography of my life. He insisted, over and over, in
coaxing me into doing something differently. If I had shown him a photograph in
which some highfalutin New York City
photographer had used back or front projection I was to do my best to find a
way of shooting in Vancouver
with limited equipment.

In short, and Dahl
would approve of this sort of briefness, he was the best art director/designer
I ever worked for.

All the above
translates into the important reason why anybody reading this should make sure
to see the show before it closes on November 29. Or you can always explore his
work at his site here.

Chris Dahl, right, Photograph by Jane Edwards-Griffin

That important reason
is that rarely in any show I have ever seen in Vancouver can I attest to the
artist’s work as being sparse, elegant, neat and beautifully designed and
framed.

Dahl’s mantra in
magazine design was the use of big, uncluttered photographs or illustrations. Dahl
is a talented typographer so legibility was always supreme. Somehow his choice
became something beautiful, easy to the eye and always, to repeat that word, elegant.

His exhibition is about
musicians, cars, circuses, hockey teams, vintage electric guitars, surfing, etc but always in that golden
era of the 50s, sixty years before you could self-design your business card and
have 500 of them delivered to your home for under $10 including postage. Design has become flat and most of it amply proves that the masses
need a bit of heavy-duty schooling before they can call themselves designers.

I sometimes wonder
about Dahl’s parents and what they might have thought (or even worried about) of their long-haired son
who drummed for psychedelic bands before he drifted to design.

All of us can thank whatever
road it was he took to Damascus (driving his Rolls or his Bentley) saw the light, and how, finally, here he is all elegance at the Harrison Galleries.

On Sunday I went to a
concert held at St. Philip's Anglican Church on the West-side. It featured the Novo Ensemble (in this iteration, as it varies, but always with Marina Hasselberg on cello), with Mark McGregor,
flute and Mark Haney on double bass. The music, all brand new, featured works from
composers Jordan Nobles, Michael Oesterle, James Maxwell, Luc Martin and
Nicolás González Thomas. All five of the compositions were new without being
(to use an old, and I believe exhausted phrase), Bartók-like.

The program was
played a week before at Pyatt Hall on Seymour
Street (around the corner from the Orpheum) but I
waited because of financial restrictions (entry to the church concert was by
donation!) but also knowing that the acoustics of St. Philip's are as good as
they get in this city. And when you consider that you are surrounded by
beautiful stained-glass windows you cannot lose.

Two of the pieces I
thought special. The first Lux by Jordan Nobles had the flute playing a melody
while the cello and bass played an extended and recurrent bass line. John
Oliver, noted Vancouver
composer, who was present refused to out and out agree with me that Lux was
sort of a chaconne. His statement to we was, “Lux is what it is and that’s it
and I will not resort to baroque terminology.” Lux had Mark McGregor playing
what this amateur would call harmonics, some so low key you might not have
heard them had you been elsewhere in a venue without enhanced acoustics. Mark
Haney pretty well tapped (loudly sometimes) the lower tip of his bow on his
instruments cords.

The second piece, it
moved me immediately, and particularly in the second movement wasMichael Oesterle’s Rambler Rose (a two
movement work). It left me with an impression, a nostalgia, that this was something inspired by Bach’s
suites for unaccompanied cello. That Hasselberg was indeed playing solo cello
added to that pleasant feeling. Perhaps it had all to do that these
days, unless one looks for them, it is not all that common to be exposed to
contemporary pieces for solo cello.

Mark McGregor's flute was never strident to my ears and Mark Haney's bass was a pleasure to listen to, for once as a featured instrument and not part of the background bass sound of so many orchestras. All in all a concert
to savour and to also make me look forward to the next installment of the Novo
Ensemble. In a short Hasselberg has managed to penetrate two camps of
music whose fans seem to be apart. With her endpinned cello she has found eager
new music composers willing to write for her and with her baroque cello she has
participated in concerts of Early Music Vancouver. Surely could she not be the
bridge between these folks that seem to have irreconcilable differences?

But this blog does not
end here!

After the first
performed work, Nobles’ Lux two elderly ladies behind me were giggling. I
turned around and I said, “You are probably commenting on the cellist’s shoes.”
One of them put her hand on my shoulder and said, “Bless you, yes!”

In 1964 one of my
first girlfriends gave me Bach’s Suites for unaccompanied cello played by Pablo
Casals. It was an Angel recording. When my scratched records became unplayable
I purchase sometime in the beginning of the 80s the CD version even though I
had no CD player.

Cellists, as far as I
was concerned were men. It was a man’s instrument.

How a cellist holds
the instrument has been a running controversy since Antonio Vivaldi’s time at
Ospedale della Pieta in Venice
in the early 18th century. When his all-girl orchestra entertained
convent guests they were hidden from view by an iron lattice.

Some say it was
because some of the women were deformed but most likely it had to do with the
way women cellists (men, too) had to hold the instrument firmly between their
legs. The difficulty for women holding a cello in a lady-like manner (side
saddle?) may have contributed to the paucity of women cellists before the 20th
century.

That did not inhibit
Joyce Menting, the first woman I ever saw playing a baroque cello for Vancouver’s Pacific
Baroque Orchestra at a performance I attended in 1992. I was amazed. She held
her cello firmly between her legs, as there was no endpin on her baroque
instrument to stabilize it on the floor. In fact some say that the invention of
the endpin ushered in women cello players as it relaxed the woman’s hold (her
legs) on the cello.

Though the endpin was in use as early as the 17th
century, it did not meet with universal approval until the late 19th
century. The benefits of playing with the endpin were important for all
cellists but particularly so for women, for whom it was a virtual necessity”
feminine grace was saved in the more upright position and relaxed posture
permitted by the pin. The use of the endpin is probably the main cause of the
sudden surge of women cellists in the late 1800s.

Menting wore a black
skirt, fine stockings and black suede shoes. Her mascara seemed to be in the
same shade as her stockings.

Not too long after I
was sitting on the last row of the Orpheum’s ground floor with many older
concert goers in wheel chairs. The first half of the concert featured
Tchaikovsky’s Cello Concerto. The soloist was the beautiful Shauna Rolston who
was wearing tight black pants, a flimsy blouse and a snake armlet on her left
arm. After the interval the room literally emptied before the VSO started
Shostakovich’s Symphony Number 2. I was amazed as this symphony may have been
contemporary to many of the senior citizens present. Perhaps they had all come
for the Tchaikovsky and the bonus snake armlet.

With Mark Haney

That cellist Marina
Hasselberg who plays both cello variants, the modern one with the endpin and the
baroque without is from Portugal is beautifully following the tradition of Guilhermina Suggia (1885-1950), also born in Portugal, who caused a fuss
and a minor scandal when she studied under Pablo Casals, became his mistress
(and some say she married him) who did away with the side saddle and brought
her own brand (besides her obvious virtuosity) of grace, glamour, fashion sense
to an instrument heretofore the domain of men.

Suggia dumped (some
say) Casals and moved to England
in the 1920s. It was there that Welsh painter Augustus John (his own
illegitimate daughter, Amaryliss Fleming became a well-known cellist) painted
Suggia’s portrait now in the Tate’s collection. Of the painting the Manchester
Guardian wrote, “It will serve to remind future generations that here was a
musician who matched the nobility of her art with that of her presence on the
concert platform.”

Madame Suggia - Augustus John - 1920/23

That of course
explains no doubt why the two women behind me were giggling at Hasselberg’s
exquisite high heel shoes, tight black pants and elegant old top, not to
mention freshly and surgically snipped bangs.

Watching Hasselberg
play on Sunday the words of Stephen Gwynn, “When Suggia Was Playing,” Country
Life Magazine, November 26, 1927 seem to be most appropriate:

It was a delight to see her, before each bout
began, sit up alert, balance and adjust her bow as a fencer balances his foil,
then settle herself with that huge tortoise between her knees, like ajockey sitting down to the ride: erect first
and watchful, till gradually, caught by the stream she created she swung with
it, gently, sleepily, languidly, until the mood shifted, the stream grew a
torrent and the group rocked and swayed almost to wreckage. Or again, she would
be sitting forward, taking her mount by the head, curbing it, fretting it, with
imperious staccato movements, mastering it completely – letting it free to
caracol easily, or once more break into full course, gathering itself in,
extending itself, in a wild gallop…And then at the end, with some long-drawn
sighing fall, or with one abrupt vehement clang of sound, she would finish,
would raise her bow high, in a gesture of dismissal, break the magic and come
to the top like a diver, a little breathless and smiling.

I welcome this triple injection of glamour, youth and virtuosity. Vancouver will profit.